AAUP Files Brief in Colorado Tenure Case

Academe, Mar/Apr 2006 by Bradley, Gwendolyn

In January, the AAUP filed an amicus brief before the Colorado Court of Appeals in Saxe v. Board of Trustees of Metropolitan State College of Denver. The case arises from the unilateral adoption of a new faculty handbook in 2003 by the college's board of trustees. The plaintiffs, who include five tenured faculty members at the institution and the Colorado Teachers Federation, sought a judicial declaration that the 2003 handbook provisions eviscerate the meaning of tenure in the academic community by establishing "conditions under which employment of tenured faculty members can be terminated or their compensation reduced." In May 2005, a state trial court granted the college administration's motion for summary judgment and ruled that the administration had not breached the tenure protections afforded by the faculty handbook.

The AAUP amicus brief, written by Robert Gorman, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, argues that the faculty handbook changes imposed by the college's board abrogated the rights inhering in tenure during retrenchment, and that new handbook provisions governing retrenchment failed to afford protections of academic due process to affected faculty members. The amicus brief is available on the AAUP Web site.

-G.B.